why to believe?

1st - sry 4 bad english but I cannot do anything Smile

so, I was thinking about "why you believe in something?"
I don't believe in gods or such things.
I'm just a ateist and that's it.
So my q is "Why do you believe in something?"

best regards

-Rev Smile

Your question is very vauge, but I will try my best to anser the way you want.

I believe in the things I do because that is what I have learned by praying and reading scripture. I follow what the Catholic Church believes as a Protestant follows their church's beliefs. For some, the beliefs have been passed down through thier families and they believe that because their brother, sisiter, mother, and father believes that also.

P.S. The new rules say that you can't excuse yourself for bad engilsh, either post right or go to the other language forums.

I believe in things so I can proudly say I have faith.

I have always been very spiritual. I've always felt a connection to nature. I din't wake up one day and decide this is what I believe in, it's always been part of me. i've always considered myself as pagan, and as I grew up I became drawn to Druidism. I have always accepted the fact that no matter how much I know, there is always more to learn about, and I enjoy learning.

I believe, because I know. The perfection and harmony in nature points to deliberate design, not a mere accident or mistake. Christianity has also been in my family since - forever, so you could say I was born into religion (which I have no complaints about).

The question itself is very subjective, and it's something I like to ask others.
Many times (at least very often in my area), people seem to believe what they do simply because that was the way they were raised. They were grown to think that what they believe is truth. It's a shame, really, that they never even consider other possibility. We might even get some tolerance that way..

Anyway, I believe what I do because of my life. I was agnostic for a long time, trying to meditate on the idea of which religion would be the truth (for me). I tried not to confine myself simply because I was raised a Christian, but in truth I think that may have guided my end decision.

so what religion are you Juparis?

I'm raised as a christian and I'm still a christian. The first years (maybe the first 18 years or so) I believed because I was raised that way. (Note: I really believed, but I didn't really consider why)
But the last years I noticed that if I believe there is a God a lot of things in the world make sense. Not all, I don't have all the answers. But believing in a loving God, a real person, which is mourning for all the deaths and injured and which is working to renew this world gives me the secureness that this world will come to a 'happy' end Wink

Besides, I sometimes notice that God is there. I don't mean I had a 'paranormal' experience or something like that. I just mean the feeling you can have when you are in the same room with a loved one. You don't have to look, you just know he or she is there. A little bit like that.

So, that's why I believe in God. I just know He is there and He wants me to be with him. That amazes me.

JohanFH

It's a good little thing to have for when you're laying in bed wondering what will be... nice feeling really

right now, its often because beliefs are already part of you upbringing, parents passes down to their children... the children later on will find their own belief or will remain to the same belief they have, which they will be passing on to their children... this is the logical reason of the belief.

Personally, I have my own belief because somehow I still hope that there is hope for any negative event or emotion... one's own ideals that everything will be fine isn't enough, that they have to have some divine belief or intervention to make themselves belief that there is indeed hope... its like saying, "to see it is to believe it..."... but that's just my opinion...

Why do I believe in what I believe? I look at this question not as what are my reasons for a belief but why I have a right to believe.
I believe in God with all my heart and I just do not mean I have a belief in God but that I actually believe in God .... believe God will fulfill a promise. I believe, I do not have to apologize, justify nor offer reasons for my belief or even provide logical arguments either to other people or myself. I can still question everything but I do not need to understand everything to have a relationship. I can, why, because, I exercise and maintain my free will, and choose.

Very Happy

You also have a right to :

believe that setting yourself on fire won't hurt
believe that the Invisible Pink Unicorn is wayyyy better than Jesus
believe that someone has actually asked you to apologise
believe that your previous posting makes some sort of sense.

It is a confused and deluded reason to believe anything - because you have the right. Of course you have the right - as I said you have the right to believe any idiotic thing you want to - that is not a good reason for doing so.
The idea of a 'relationship' with Jesus where 'God keeps promises' is simply wishful thinking and self deception. If God really talks to you then you probably have 1st stage schizophrenia. If you try to say what exactly this 'promise' is then you will find that you cannot say anything useful about it, because that would require something concrete - something real and therefore measurable. When you try to measure this 'promise' you will find it impossible - that's why we call it faith.

So why do you waste people's time then? If you don't want to explain your beliefs then why interrupt people who do? The only possible reason would be either to get attention or to interrupt perfectly good conversations with trolling. If you've got nothing to say then say nothing - that's fine.

PS if you actually read what I WROTE instead of what you think I wrote, I didn't say your beliefs were idiotic. I said you have the right to believe idiotic things. Hence my earlier reference to fire not hurting - it is an example to illustrate a general point - just because you have the right to believe any idiocy you like, that doesn't make it either sensible or even sane to do so. I can believe that I am a small teapot if I want - it is my right. That isn't a very good reason to believe it though and it would be wrong, regardless of my 'right'. Having the right to believe something doesn't suddenly mean that the belief itself is anything other than lunacy.

I believe that we can live eternally. I believe so because I can not just accept that death would be the end of my existence. And believing so wouldn't hurt anyway. If I won't exist after I'm dead, I won't be able to regret that I did but If I will exist then I will be glad that I did that is if I can remember that I did.
And it is reasonable for me to believe so like any animals who fears of death and it is in my intelligence as a human being where I benefit of being able to believe. Pray

The life of faith is very important to us all as man or woman.

Our faith in Christ is what holds us .

I notice that people who have faith in Christ has never had reason to regret.

Faith is believing that God will do what he says he will do...

One thing I can say that if you donot believe yourself , you will not be able to change your life. Belief is the source of hope and give strength to fight the odd. Remember the old Greek story of Pandora's box--When all bad thing came out of that box, the only good thing was HOPE which let human fight with all bad things like anger, sorrow etc.

I believe and have faith. But I am not that person to keep faith as I am christian, Hindu, Muslim Buddhist or any other. I learn, listen and watch books, programs and shows respectively and follow good things of all. throw out bad aspects and receive good things of all religion. This helped me to establish good relations with all people equally for me.

So you believe that Jesus Christ is your saviour and God, that Jesus Christ is not God, that Yaweh the one and only God and that he isn't. That when we die we reincarnate and that when we die we remain until judgement day.
Interesting belief system but it would make my head hurt.

why to believe? It is in our genetics! just that simple.

why to believe? Why, there is no reason to believe. Smile

Are you speaking of spiritual "things"?

I believe in things that are proven to be true and not because someone says so i.e. man i.e.most religions.

I do so because such beliefs make my and others lives safer, longer and more interesting and enjoyable.

So what exactly are you asking?

Well if you are in a war with any people or country and you don't have any one to believe than you are in big problem. You may have all powers to fight with but you will not have power to control everything that happens.
And even if any thing like god does not exists you can always make your heart believe in it. After all believing in something is better than believing in nothing.

If there is a need in the human psyche for belief in something to provide a 'search', that simply means that religion is entirely arbitrary. You may as well believe in Zeus or The Sun if the point is to induce some placebo mechanism.

So if it is our genetics -who planted it there?? For no reason???
I think it is a logical explanation:

1. we do learn from the peek-a-boo game at early age
2. We apply that on the world to survive, imagining that there is a predator around the corner.
3. We are social
4. And if a world of shit, it might be appealing that it might not be just shit in the sky...
5. Created big groups that also had ideas of populate it self, and had the brain capacity to imagine the enemy and therefore predicted and won battles.

bingo - lots of genes with the inprinted idea to believe!

Nonono....that is not how it works at all.
Genetic traits survive if they offer an advantage in reproductive terms. Belief in God doesn't directly offer that - it has to be something else. Personally I find Dennett's model convincing. Religion is simply a 'misfiring' of the tendency to assign 'cause' to events.
Assigning 'intention' is a shortcut and therefore offers a survival advantage.
'That tiger intends to eat me' is a much shorter path to running like hell than 'hello, here's some new animal, I wonder what those large teeth and claws are designed for.....'.
Because assigning 'agency' is selected for, we assign it where non exists. Thus the thunderstorm must have an 'agent'. The bad harvest must be caused by something being angry. And so on...until you end up with monotheistic deities.

nonono - hm, wolfpacks...

People are afraid of wolfpacks...
Wolfpacks grow into... warewolfs.
Warewolfs must be the friends of something bigger - the Devil!
Poeple like knights, knights become heroes...
Jeanne d'arc becomes holy.
Holy people must be friends of something bigger - The God!

Just like a chess game. You see the metafor.

The question itself is very subjective, and it's something I like to ask others.
Many times (at least very often in my area), people seem to believe what they do simply because that was the way they were raised. They were grown to think that what they believe is truth. It's a shame, really, that they never even consider other possibility. We might even get some tolerance that way..

Anyway, I believe what I do because of my life. I was agnostic for a long time, trying to meditate on the idea of which religion would be the truth (for me). I tried not to confine myself simply because I was raised a Christian, but in truth I think that may have guided my end decision.[/quote]

You believe in something, or maybe trust something because you cannot know everything, if yu want very general answer

I believe in what I can glean from my five senses, my own intellect and what I or others can repeat with the same result. ... i.e. the scientific method. For those reasons, I believe in the hard sciences, especially physics.

When it comes right down to it, I think many (most?) religious people believe because they want others to do their thinking for them and make tough choices for them - thus relieving them of the mental and emotional burden of doing these for themselves. Here are a few additional reasons:

They cannot handle:

Instead, they like:

Face it, life's a bitch or what you make of it here on this planet, then you die. It's really not that complicated.

I think you miss a very 'biggie'.

The fact that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people

There is a really deep sense of 'justice' in most people. It is interesting to speculate about where this comes from - whether it has evolutionary roots or is purely sociological - but the fact remains that most of us have it.
It seems wrong, on a 'cosmic' level, that people who are apparently good, or at least largely innocent, have terrible things happen to them. It offends against our sense of justice. The notion of some divine 'score-keeper' is therefore very attractive...

I believe in something because i create a different kind of feeling inside me. The different feeling creates belief inside me and thus I believe in that thing.

Sorry, but feelings aren't always reliable. Just as much as anything can go wrong in our body, the chemical processes that is involved in feelings can also go wrong.

[quote="Dennise"][quote="deanhills"]

Deanhills:

See man !

The God will not give a proof to you first, but you must give him a proof first that you can follow good things and can be good in sight of God Wink

Then God gives you the proof that he is watching and helping you and is with you at every moment of your Life. And you will feel his power in your Day to Day life when your small things will get complete easily.

But for that, you must first believe on something with true spirit Cool

I am experienced Smile

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